By most rankings, DC is not even in top 20 or 30 most dangerous US cities, in per capita crime rates. And DC rates declining. "Still far more dangerous than it should be"? Sure. But so is NEARLY EVERY big US city. Dozens of them much much more than DC. No, Trump is not "right."

New report from ChinaFile takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how information is controlled in China "...imagining China’s censorship system as a “wall” mistakes its true nature. The system isn’t static, it’s dynamic, multipart, and adaptable—and concerned with far more than […]

Good read: a detailed and accessible report published on @chinafile by Jessica Batke and Laura Edelson on China's internet censorship system, known as the "Locknet" locknet.chinafile.com/the-locknet/...

Thanks @robbiebarnett.bsky.social for referring to work by @bennoweiner.bsky.social and me for this ChinaFile discussion on the Dalai Lama’s succession www.chinafile.com/conversation...

中国网络控制已演化为智能舆论控制系统。ChinaFile最新研究显示，中国的网络控制早已超越传统"防火墙"概念，形成了一套协同运作的系统化舆论控制机制。在国家层面，中共通过立法、监管与技术手段设定控制底线，对各大平台施压执行监管，决定舆论是否推广或是屏蔽。平台层面，社交媒体平台主动筛查敏感内容，通过屏蔽、下架、限流等方式进行主动过滤或推广，形成算法式维稳。社会层面，通过实名制、自我审查、举报文化的普及，让所有人都参与到言论审查中。这套系统可根据政治敏感程度灵活调控，让每个人成为审查者和传播者。令人担忧的是，这种治理模式正通过中国科技平台的海外扩张，逐步影响和侵蚀全球网络自由空间。

One of the things I was most excited that we got to do for the Locknet report was to produce these explainers of how the internet actually works. It’s not magic!

Amazing work here. One of the smartest and most comprehensive reports ever done on Chinese censorship -- a topic that's going to become so much more relevant as DeepSeek and other Chinese LLMs continue to grab territory

👇 "The [PRC censorship] system...intertwines human and machine into a complex apparatus that pervades the online and offline worlds/At the same time, the system is a resource-constrained, best-guess, partially-deployed patchwork, every component of which is imperfect and subject to failure"

The charge on this man’s record is driving without a license. Now he’s locked up in what he calls a “Hispanic concentration camp” www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-d...

Thought provoking and informative piece by @shellyk.bsky.social for @chinafile.bsky.social www.chinafile.com/reporting-op...

1/2 You could write a book about one atrocious headline in print NYT today (I sort of wrote this book 30 years ago, Breaking the News, but others can take a turn.) What's wrong this headline? Mamdani "faces scrutiny" **ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY** because NYT decided to make this a "thing." Really bad.

The accurate headline on the story would have been "Mamdani Identified as Asian and Ugandan on College Application"

On July 2, the Dalai Lama released a statement about the process of selecting his successor. What's going to happen next? A ChinaFile Conversation with Ian Johnson, Isabel Hilton, Tashi Rabgey, and Robert Barnett: www.chinafile.com/co...

NEW: A ChinaFile investigation into China's powerful, but leaky, internet censorship system at locknet.chinafile.com 1/21

So looking forward to interviewing Leslie Tai about this surprising and riveting film. I first saw it last year, can't wait to see it again, and hope you'll come watch it with us.

“I don’t even know if they can give me this visa that I just got.” We spoke with student visa applicants in Beijing following the Trump administration’s announcement that it would begin “aggressively” revoking the visas of Chinese students.

Lemme explain what bilateral trade deficits are, so that you can better understand -- and perhaps be infuriated by -- the intellectual error that's transforming our economy. #TeachEcon

On June 25, @chinafile.bsky.social presents a screening of 'How To Have An American Baby,' a "kaleidoscopic voyage into the booming shadow economy" catering to birth tourism from China to the U.S. Followed by a Q&A with director Leslie Tai and @susanjakes.bsky.social. asiasociety.org/new-york/eve...

I don’t think you can be too pro technocrat. But if it is an offense, I guess I’ll cop to it. The US population had a good thing and discarded it for (generously) a pack of snake oil salesmen.

In China people have long counseled keeping quiet to stay safe. China scholar Michael Berry now finds himself giving thay advice to his foreign students in America-https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/notes-chinafile/cautioning-his-students-stay-quiet-scholar-of-china-hears-echoes

This is the person who has the official power to judge whether the available evidence says he should launch nuclear weapons

It's working, I'm now aware of more antisemitism than I was before

A @chinafile.bsky.social Conversation with Wendy Cutler, Michael Hirson, Lizzi C. Lee, @isabelh.bsky.social, and Andrew Polk:

On April 8, join former New York Times Beijing bureau chief Jane Perlez and Orville Schell for a special live podcast taping of Face-Off: The U.S. vs China. The episode will cover their decades of experience reporting on the U.S. and China, and what comes next. asiasociety.org/center-us-ch...

Not in the US news yet, but the ex-president of Doctors Without Borders had a talk on humanitarian work cancelled by NYU's department of emergency medicine seemingly because it mentioned that in 2024 Gaza was one of the places with the largest number of "humanitarian victims"

The Trump administration has canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics. nyti.ms/43Xz77q

Many have pointed out how the larger conversation about the group chat eludes discussion of the horrors of war, but seeing a civilian woman just accepted as “excellent” collateral is … pretty ghastly

There was one singular person the Trump team wanted to kill. They thought they tracked him to his girlfriend’s place, presumably in a civilian apartment building in Sana’a. So they dropped bombs on the neighborhood and leveled the building. Reactions from the group: “amazing job” “Excellent” “👊🇺🇸💥”

It was debacle not a fiasco.

One less obvious way that Gawker foreshadowed this moment was by showing how people and institutions crack when they're under malicious, pervasive, and unreasonable assault—you can see Columbia University following Nick down the path of trying to bargain and to rationalize having been made a target

This is so obviously in bad faith that ideally there would be additional sanctions for the false claim. There is no remotely plausible case that providing the basic info Boasberg requested in camera would in any way imperil national security.

Pen Names, Stern Warnings: On Sunday, a state-run newspaper used a coded byline to signal concern about local government waste — a reminder of how the opaque internal communication of the Chinese Communist Party works. chinamediaproject.org/2025/03/25/p...

see, here's the thing. columbia could hold a big press conference tomorrow, saying this is absolutely unacceptable and we will do anything legally possible to protect our students. Or they could shrug and say they had a warrant, maybe, we think, and we didn't like that guy anyway.

The way it works is that you strip fundamental rights from targets with less political support that people will turn their consciences off to justify persecuting and then eventually the state can do it to anyone, that’s always been the plan bsky.app/profile/pbum...

A faculty member trying to get a student deported is a monstrous abuse of power.

The ADL celebrates the Trump admin orchestrating the disappearance of a permanent resident and his transportation across state lines as retaliation for his politics

👇 @williamyang120.bsky.social @susanjakes.bsky.social

Join ASPI's Center for China Analysis and @chinafile.bsky.social on March 11 at 6:30 p.m. for a conversation with Julian Gewirtz and @susanjakes.bsky.social on where Xi Jinping is taking #China and the future of U.S.-China relations. Register now!⬇️

On March 11, join Julian Gewirtz and @susanjakes.bsky.social for a conversation on the many questions that undergird what is next for U.S.-China relations. A presentation of @chinafile.bsky.social and @asiapolicy.asiasociety.org's Center on China Analysis: asiasociety.org/policy-insti...

Thrilled to welcome historian, China expert and recent National Security Council Senior Director, Julian Gewirtz, to discuss where Xi Jinping is taking China and how the forces convulsing US politics will affect that. Join us 3/11, 6:30pm @asiasociety NYC-asiasociety.org/poli...

"Xi Jinping’s third term has not resulted in élite solidarity or the ebb of purges. Instead, it has occasioned unceasing political storms sweeping across the country," writes scholar Wu Guoguang: www.chinafile.com/re...

Which country? "the entire power system of [XXX] provides sufficient and powerful institutional means for the leader’s personal concentration of power to endure even amid political cleansing. Cults of personality are one such means…" 1/2

And this is good, too. Have long referred to it, in my class on authoritarianism www.chinafile.com/viewpoint/ch...

"At the railway station in Lyon, France, late 1929, a 27-year-old Chinese man is boarding a train. The train will take him to Marseille, where he will take an ocean liner back to his homeland. His young French wife comes to see him off; she is holding their daughter…"

March 11 in New York — @chinafile.bsky.social Presents: Shifting Terrain in U.S.-China Relations and Xi Jinping’s Vision for China’s Future, a conversation between Julian Gewirtz and @susanjakes.bsky.social. https://buff.ly/43dMO1J

This is how some Taiwanese are getting ready for an invasion or a blockade from the People's Republic of China: